A post on SemiAccurate breaks down some information from PC Watch (translation) suggesting that Intel's upcoming Broadwell CPUs will be soldered to the motherboard, rather than socketed, a detail they have now confirmed with a pair of OEMs. They offer the distressed opinion that this will be a death knell to the desktop PC and the enthusiast market, and though they add that they've received information indicating there's a "good chance" that the Sky Lake processors that will follow Broadwell will be socketed for one or two generations to follow, they conclude: "By then the last remaining overclockers and experimenters on the PC front will be gone, and for good technical reasons." Thanks Ant via Slashdot.

Beamer wrote on Nov 27, 2012, 11:29:Can't load the page, what's the rationale for this? It may make some sense for a mobile processor, though even then, but it sounds as if it makes none for desktop. No value.

If they solder the chips right onto the board and do the production themselves then they can lock out companies like Asus/Gigabyte/etc from the mobo industry altogether. A literal manufactured monopoly on the Intel PC platform.